High in The Old Oak Tree

‘High in The Old Oak Tree’ is an illustrated picture-book-poem all about a boy who spends his whole life in an oak tree.

The book shows what an old oak tree is really like if you take the time to discover its secrets: wolves hide in its branches, you can touch the moon from the top, and there’s a vast sea of tears sighing under its roots.

It’s for anyone who loves trees and likes to take a moment out of the busyness of life to daydream.

This is the favourite book I’ve ever made and I go back and look at it a lot.

The poem has strong rhythm, rhyme, and repetition that can be happily turned into actions with children.

Quite a few schools have used my poems like this.

Here’s an extract:

“In the dancing shade of the high oak treeI climbed through the afternoon, I made my bed in its strong armsBeneath the silver moon.

Bright distant silver moon.

I woke with the sun in the bright oak tree,To see drifting clouds below,I walked I sang I banged my stick,And forgot to go home.

Happy on my own.”

The book was inspired by the huge oak trees at Pestalozzi International Village, where I often camped with my family on Woodcraft Folk camps. I made up a version of the story while I was camping there one Summer. It slowly turned into the poem that appears in the book over a couple of years.